Ex-India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar escapes WhatsApp money scam. Here’s what happened

Monetary scams through social media have become a common practice nowadays for the fraudsters with several high-profile celebrities becoming victims of it. Recently, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar shared his ordeal with a fraudulent person on social media.

A cricketer-turned-commentator, Sanjay Manjrekar, was recently approached by one of his Whatsapp contacts for a help of ₹25000. Realising something was wrong, Sanjay Manjrekar offered the scammer 10 times more the money that he was asked to pay.

The scammer didn't reply to Sanjay Manjrekar after that. Sharing his story on 'X', Sanjay Manjrekar said, "Got WhatsApp msg from an acquaintance asking for 25K. Knew his no was hacked. So replied, how do you want me to pay, Gpay ok? Promptly a no was sent asking me to send a screen shot after payment. I replied, can I please pay you 2.5 lacs? No more messages after that.”

How people get scammed on Whatsapp?

One of the most popular messaging platforms, Whatsapp has become the latest tool for the scammers and cyber criminals. In fact, according to a report in The Week, the Union Government last year asked Whatsapp's parent company - Meta - to address these monetary scams.

As far as the Whatsapp scams are concerned, the fraudsters manipulate the innocent persons and make them share an OTP. In sharing the OTP, the scammers get access to the person's Whatsapp account and then ask for money from one of users in the contact list.

Seeing, someone from their own contact list seeking help, the persons lend the money, without knowing they have been scammed. Not just in Whatsapp, Telegram is another social media platform which is used extensively by the scammers to draw money from the common people.

According to NDTV, a 2024 survey revealed that nearly half of India faced financial fraud in the last three years.